Books

December 4, 1999|THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

Desire of the Everlasting Hills:

The World Before and After Jesus

Thomas Cahill

Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 253 pages, $24.95

We have heard it all before. So many times, we've stopped listening. So writes Cahill as he examines "the world before and after Jesus." For this third volume in his series on The Hinges of History, the author of How the Irish Saved Civilization wedges into the millennial consciousness to present a fresh, contemporary and orthodox view of Jesus and the early church. Following up on his second volume, The Gifts of the Jews, he emphasizes Christianity's connection to Judaism while using modern references as recent as Kosovo and vernacular phrases as recent (and sometimes off-key) as "Earth to Jesus. Hel-lo!" Striking and persuasive is his defense of St. Paul, tackling all the accusations from homosexuality to misogyny. The footnotes throughout are rich with background and explanation.

The Life of Our Lord

Charles Dickens

Simon & Schuster, 126 pages, $15

Dickens was dead, to begin with, when this little book was first published. He had never intended it for print. It was a gift to his children. The Gospel of Luke supplied the raw material, and it's interesting to see what Dickens emphasizes and what he leaves out. His account of the Last Supper, for example, includes "Do this in remembrance of me" but not "This is my body -- this is my blood."

Momma's Enchanted Supper -- and Other Stories for the Long Evenings of Advent

Carol DeChant

Loyola Press, 223 pages, $17.95

Did you grow up in a family that told stories around the supper table? Such anecdotes and footnotes to history abound in DeChant's book, and they're intertwined with musings on biblical characters and events and how they fit into the stories of our lives. Most of the pieces here have universal appeal and humor. Aunt Harriet almost meets Krushchev, but his security men find her household too eccentric. Grandma Miller visits her old friend, 90-year-old W.K. Kellogg, while he's estranged from his brother. Stripey the cat keeps trying to go home to the old bungalow. Each of the 31 short pieces is headed by a Bible verse, and most are appropriate for any age. There's a bonus: In the middle you'll find a recipe for pink cake, one of those Jell-O concoctions that always turn up at potluck and holiday dinners.

Music

Home for Christmas

Anne Sofie von Otter

Deutsche Grammophon, 63 minutes

Many -- too many -- opera stars have made Christmas albums. And the results are often depressingly glitzy, overblown affairs full of pomp where intimacy was wanted. Von Otter knows that, and long ago she resolved that any Christmas album she'd do would be different. Her Home for Christmas CD shows just how rewarding a scaled-down approach can be. Von Otter is accompanied by a few solo strings, accordion, synthesizer and guitar. Some of the arrangements are annoyingly New Agey, but von Otter's way with the gentler songs more than makes up for that. Even in O Holy Night (sung in the original French, Cantique de Noel), she manages a beautiful restraint where other singers pull out all the stops. Most of the other songs are sacred, too, and there's a mix of the traditional and the unusual. The disc begins and ends with Koppangen, sung once in English and once in von Otter's native Swedish.